Immigrant Defense Project

The Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) works to secure fairness and justice for immigrants in the United States. IDP aims to abolish a racially biased criminal legal system that violates basic human rights and an immigration system that every year tears hundreds of thousands of immigrants with convictions from their homes, their families, and their communities.

IDP fights to end the current era of unprecedented mass deportation via interconnected strategies that attack the two systems at multiple points — strengthening immigrant defense through training and expert advice; challenging unfair laws through impact litigation; shaping just policies through advocacy; and empowering communities and advocates through alliance building and education, and changing negative perceptions about immigrants through communications and messaging.

IDP helps lay the groundwork for a day when the criminal and immigration laws of the United States respect and uphold the human rights of everyone.

Under our current immigration laws, contact with the criminal legal system can come back to haunt immigrants and their families many years later. Khalil, a social worker and advocate, was taken from his family by ICE during an early morning home raid because of a conviction that was over a decade old. IDP worked with allies to win Khalil’s release from ICE and a pardon from Governor Cuomo. “Every night that she goes to bed, there is a chance that she could wake up and I could be gone again. Can you imagine what trauma that brings to a child? You wake up in the morning and everything changes…,” says Khalil about his experience facing detention and deportation.